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Anonymous GiTS fan noted a Variety story informing us that DreamWorks has acquired the rights to Ghost in the Shell and has plans to produce a "3D Live Action" version of the popular anime. This happened apparently because Spielberg is a fan. He says "'Ghost in the Shell' is one of my favorite stories ... It's a genre that has arrived, and we enthusiastically welcome it to DreamWorks." I hope they add a talking donkey.

Does anyone else get a sort of Outer Limits/Twilight Zone feel when they watch Ghost in the Shell? I've only been exposed to what's on Adult Swim but for some reason I liken each episode to those shows. Something odd or peculiar is happening and there is a startling revelation at the end of the episode. I know on the surface it's just a police thriller with sci-fi themes of artificial intelligence and robotics but I still get this feel. I also get the same feel when reading a Philip K. Dick or some of Ray Bradbury's short stories.

Then again, when watch Cowboy Bebop I feel like it's modern day Clint Eastwood western with the shiny veneer of space. And I just read The Watchmen for the first time last week and it felt more like a philosophical analysis of power than a simple graphic novel.

Despite what many times goes wrong with movie adaptations, I welcome this as it will expose the Ghost in the Shell themes to younger people without the insane licensing fees I've come across when trying to acquire this anime.

If you haven't seen the original version of the first ghost in the shell then you should find a copy of it and watch it. The SAC mini series is great; but the surreal feeling you are talking about from stand alone complex is minimal when compared to the full original movie:)

That's true. (Well.. it IS a Mamoru Oshii movie..) BUT! SAC ist way more true to Shirow's style than anything else.

Well, the original movie really was not like Shirow's style at all - the manga does not have that surreal "Twilight Zone" feel in the slightest. It's very dense and packed with info and it's one of those graphic novels where you've got to sort of immerse yourself in this world that he's created and consider all the problems we're going to come up against in the future and that's what makes it interesting.

Oshii's film is interesting in a totally different way, in that it's less about the world itself and more about this larger question of what life actually is. The world is only really featured as much as it needs to be to support that question and present arguments. That question was there in the manga too, but it was just one of many issues the manga raised. Oshii boiled down the manga to what he thought was the central question, and he stripped everything out that he thought got in the way of that. And that's what left him room to sort of explore the inner workings of the characters a little bit more and create that surrealness, which of course only served to support the theme too.

The second movie, though, was terrible. That was more like masturbation on Oshii's part. I don't think I've ever seen a sci-fi film that's more slowly paced... and that includes 2001: a Space Odyssey (which Oshii clearly uses for inspiration).

Whenever somebody talks about doing a new adaptation of GitS, the question is always whether they'll adapt the manga or the original film. I personally think the manga is basically unfilmable (as a standalone feature film) and whatever film is made then has to basically do what Oshii did and take one element out and focus on that. Maybe there's a different element that can be pulled out than the original film did, but I don't think Shirow's manga can ever really be boiled down to a 2 hour movie. It's probably a mistake to try, and luckily Oshii saw that and made something original and unique on its own. Hopefully Spielberg is that smart.

Though those scenes were completely removed from the US version of the manga. As usual US audiences are allowed as much torture, violence, and brutality as you can throw at them, but god forbid they see a nipple [animeprime.com] (link to SFW editing reports).

The SAC mini series is great; but the surreal feeling you are talking about from stand alone complex is minimal when compared to the full original movie:)

Its a matter of opinion, but I like the SAC series better than the movies mostly because its more down to earth or in a sense it strives to deal with modern issues in a new context of a society on the verge of dealing with a technological singularity.

That and it often follows into more detail about the lives secondary characters like Batou and Togusa.

The movies are of course better visually and theatric wise, but the SAC series is one of the better Anime series out there to date.

If you haven't seen the original version of the first ghost in the shell then you should find a copy of it and watch it. The SAC mini series is great; but the surreal feeling you are talking about from stand alone complex is minimal when compared to the full original movie:)

They are all good, but then again I am avid fan of Motoko. If you get the chance then I highly recommend getting the graphic novels, since not only is the artwork amazing, the stories are good and seeing all the little comments Masamune Shirow puts in really helps understand some stuff.

I'm extremely wary of this and rather unconvinced that it's even necessary. There are already two GiTS movies. They were both really cool. The pacing on Innocence was very different from GiTS, but the slower pace gives the artists space. The whole thing is really a wheels-within-wheels plot, as another poster has said. Hollywood will either make it quickly and shoddily or take six years (like they did bringing A Scanner Darkly to the screen).But to answer your question, I see it as a police/geopolitical thr

Counter-terrorism and anti-cyber warfare? That's the official mission of Public Security Section 9. [wikipedia.org] Fighting corruption is a personal mission of Aramaki, who perhaps directs more resources to cases under his jurisdiction when it's possible that corruption is the root cause. That's why Aramaki selects Detective Togusa to serve in Section 9 even though he's not trained in counter terrorism or cyber warfare. Togusa's record of fighting his superiours on ignoring damaging cases suggests to Aramaki that he'll be

Good idea? The person responsible for the suger-fest that was A.I.? Watch out for the new Ghost In The Shell version where aliens give her a human body at the end and the bullets never actually hit anyone.

Yeah, although I disagree with your use of AI as an example (sorry, liked it, although the less enjoyable bits were supposedly the ones written by Kubrick) I see no way that Spielberg will keep the originals ending, and the long conversations probably won't be reworked to occur in bits and pieces throughout the movie (or their points preserved through any other means) but probably tossed altogether. I foresee something more along the lines of T3 coming out of this.

I don't know if I would have called AI a sugar-fest. The best description I've heard of it was that it had all the warm characterization of a Stanley Kubrick film, coupled with the hard-nosed realism of a Spielberg flick.

I think there's a good chance that Masamune Shirow did. He was displaced by the Kobe earthquake and the rumor has it that he's been in declining health for a number of years. His newer work hasn't really been story oriented... when it's come out at all. The writing team for the series did a great job of rearranging and expanding his stories, but the challenge of keeping things fresh seems great.

Then there's the problem of concepts that were once innovative being absorbed into the mainstream of pop culture: If your stories stay the same, you become a has-been. If you change them to suit the audience you're a sellout. Or you can develop something different entirely. If he develops his work further I wouldn't be surprised if he decided to work on Appleseed again.

Actually he has been active, just doing standalone art (he does a lot of stuff for prepaid phone cards and the like) and more recently he's been developing the story concepts for shows instead of directly developing his own work. Ghost Hound last season and Real Drive which is currently airing in Japan are both based on story concepts by Shirow.

According to io9, they are going to kill Goku either in the first movie or the beginning of the second.

And then spend the next 3 movies trying to get him resurrected while he trains with a not-quite-dead-yet master to learn the ultimate super movie to defeat the bad guy. Until the next guy comes along and kills him again and he learns a new ultimate super move. Also the entirety of the 4th movie will be him powering up his new super move, and the bad guy trashing his friends.

When I first read this, I thought "Cool!" I'm a big fan of the anime. However, with a series like Ghost in the Shell, one almost has to worry that Hollywood will take the signature wheels-within-wheels plot lines will and severely dumb them down for us "simpleton audiences" on this side of the big pond. Hopefully not; we'll have to wait and see.

It would be neat to see them try the main arc of the first season of Stand Alone Complex, to see the world's premiere meme factory fuck up a story about an prolific, errant meme. Some sort of irony or something.

That's because every anime is so fucking deep. Japanese cinema has about the same amount of crap produced as Hollywood and animations are no exception, I'd dare to say that it's even worse - how many ninja schoolgirls fighting alien invaders with gigantic robots while exposing their panties can we watch?

I remember visiting my cousin and watching her subtitled Sailor Moon movie. I noticed two things:First, it sounds a lot less retarded in Japanese. That's probably partly because I can't understand what they're saying, but probably also because it seems to be the same exact group of voice actors doing every single English dub of Anime. Kind of ruins it for me to have Shinji of Evangeleon sound exactly like Goku of DragonBall Z.

I do feel better about it being a reasonably large company getting the rights, tho

as a GitS fan, I should be excited by this, but why do i have a feeling that Hollywood will water-down, bastardize and destroy everything that makes the original great?

Well established precedent?

Seriously, until recently any treatment of a comic-book or video game inspired subject was done completely badly by Hollywood. X-Men and some of the better ones seem to have done a good job by being true to the material. But, you still get some pretty badly done adaptations as the one studio decides that since another studio did well with a good comic adaptation, they should be able to get away with one too.

The problem is, sometimes the people adapting the material don't understand it, don't respect it, and don't know what to do with it. The result is something that the core fans don't like, that the people who have never heard of it can't figure out, and generally turns out to be a crappy movie.

I have no confidence whatsoever that Dreamworks can capture the feel and mood of Ghost in the Shell. I think you'll end up with some POS film adaptation which will be overly clunky and gimmicky, and it won't be able to tell a story. Some things are best left in anime since you have so much more freedom with the medium.

This all comes down to who does it -- get Bryan Singer or someone who has been able to deal with some of the Marvel stuff well, and you have a chance. Get Uwe Boll, and we're all screwed.:-P

Avi Arad is at the forefront of comicbook-based material, having produced the three "Spider-Man" films, the three "X-Men" movies, the two "Fantastic Four" picss and the upcoming "Iron Man" and "The Incredible Hulk."

Those are the ones which seem to have actually been able to understand the material and do it well.

There could actually be some hope for this if they get a production team who is capable of being true to the material and writing a good story.

Most of those are rubbish, though. If you want someone who's enthusiastic about the character and not just capitalizing on the "superhero craze" (Rise of the Silver Surfer? good grief that was horrid, to say nothing of X3 or Spiderman 3), you need to go with someone else. Nolan did a decent job with Batman Begins, Singer did a good one with the first 2 X-Men (but not Superman Returns), but neither can work alone. Singer's been saved by fantastic editing in the past (Usual Suspects I give credit almost entir

My problem with superhero movies is that they stay *TOO* close to the original material. Things that look good and cool on a comic book page often look silly in live-action (like most superhero costumes, which just look goofy in the real world). And stories that fit right in the cliched, soap opera-level world of comic books are horrible when translated to a more sophisticated cinematic world.

Basically, the vast majority of superhero movies are filled with cliched, one-dimensional heroes and villains; wit

My problem with superhero movies is that they stay *TOO* close to the original material. Things that look good and cool on a comic book page often look silly in live-action (like most superhero costumes, which just look goofy in the real world). And stories that fit right in the cliched, soap opera-level world of comic books are horrible when translated to a more sophisticated cinematic world.

Well, I would say that some of the recent ones have been pretty good. The X-Men series and Spiderman for instance t

More and more I've come to the conclusion that The Incredibles is my favorite super-hero movie. Granted, it was done in CG so they had much more latitude than a live-action movie. However, the story line was great and you got a sense of depth to each of the characters that you just don't normally see. If it wasn't for the fact that Pixar is too firmly in the 'family' movie camp to be able to get away with the boobies/violence in Ghost in The Shell, I'd think they could do a really interesting movie set i

Well, the original Ghost in the Shell also fails at telling a story. And Akira, and Final Fantasy, and Mononoke, and Evangelion. I found there's something intrinsic in Japanese narrative that makes it sucking at even basic storytelling. Of course, they disguise it as "my work has a more profound meaning that you have to dig and understand for yourself", which is basically admiting that nobody has a clue about what's going on in the movie.

Happily, when they can actually release a dub with quality voice actors - as in, sometime around never.

Voice acting for big releases in Japan pays well and is a huge business - think of the star quality you get in a Disney movie.

Dubs of anime films are usually done by studios specializing in bringing as many anime films over as possible as cheap as possible, and use voice acting roughly on par with cheap children's programs.

It's like watching Star Wars with Sir Alec Guinness's award winning voice replaced by some guy just out of community college theatre, who is also doing the voice of Leia using a bad falsetto.

Combine that with the consistent problem of bad obnoxious translations ("Believe it!") and the core, unavoidable issue that different languages have entirely different pacings to them (ie, trying to fit the whole english translation of a sentence into the same amount of time as the japanese sounds ridiculously forced and unnatural) and you can see why quite a few people would really prefer subtitles. With a little practice you can read it fast enough to go watch the screen at the same time. I've noticed it's only people who have only watched one or two subbed movies in their life who seem to have problems keeping up with it -- but most of them pick it up fairly well by the end of a series.

I understand. But the Ghost in the Shell movie (the first) was dubbed, and the two series (Stand Alone Complex 1 & 2) were also dubbed, all with the same actors (those who seem to be responsible for half the Anime that hits the US). It's not like they don't have decent actors.

They should so SO SO do that. Everybody would be voiced by Eric Stuart (and sound like Brock from Pokémon), Dan Green (and sound like Yami from Yu-Gi-Oh!) or Cam Clarke (and sound like Leonardo from TMHT).
AWESOME!

Ok, I realize that you're probably just trolling at this point, but what the hell.

Well, there's a lot one can say here, but it's important to remember that movies are (gasp) entertainment.

So basically what you're saying is that reading isn't entertainment?

I'm afraid the enlightened cosmopolitan movie watcher thing is rather laughable at times. It's a disease most prevalent in community college students and high school kids trying to shore up their self-esteem. The fact that a Blockbuster employee would stand behind a desk in one of those polyester polo shirts and be appalled at the plebeian tastes of patrons also hurts my head..or my funny bone, not sure which.

I don't really know where to start. First of all, believe it or not, yes there are people who actually care about the quality of the movies they're watching, and who are open to watching more than the latest gorefest. Secondly, as for you remark about my job at Blockbuster, it was just that, a job. Nothing about it defined me, just as nothing about my current job (as a software engineer) defines me. The fact that you decided to make it a point in your post says more about you than it does about me (especially so considering that you decided to post anonymously).

As someone who is genuinely multilingual and a trained linguist, I must also point out that for many of the world's languages, no, you wouldn't catch any significant nuances by hearing the original and reading the subtitles. European languages are easy; do you really think you'd be able to pick up subtle nuances in Turkish or Farsi that a good voice actor couldn't reproduce with proper direction. Are you even aware of how few universals there are with respect to suprasegmental features?

You're multilingual, good for you. I still call BS however. I speak/read/write Spanish and Japanese (though admittedly not fluently in either one), and I can say from personal experience that there is definitely a loss of nuance when dubbing is used. You're either very new to picking up languages, or you aren't nearly as good at them as you obviously think you are.

As for effectively reproducing these nuanced with properly directed voice actors, I agree that it's certainly possible, but it's also extremely rare. More often the studio is only interested in getting the filmed dubbed and out the door because foreign markets are typically after sales and the owners don't want to spend money on voice acting.

I can't help but think that the very act of watching foreign films demonstrates some openness to other cultures already. You think those vulgar masses fail to appreciate that a film is foreign because it's dubbed?

Sorry, but I disagree again. You wouldn't believe the number of people who pick up any random movie that has a cover that caught their eye only to find out after the fact that it was a foreign film. I'm not saying that this covers every case, but it still happens and probably more often than you think it does.

Sure Ghost in the Shell is quality hard edge cyberpunk style sci-fi but as far as I can tell there is nothing left in the story to tell. This probably means that anything Dreamworks makes will be a rehash of previous material which isn't automatically bad but not something some will automatically look forward too.

I predict some cyber-gang up to cyber-shenanigans vs Public Security Section 9 with a ethical/philosophical twist. It can work but they better not slack on the quality or they'll risk alienating the mainstream and the hard core fan base.

The TV series takes place in a different universe from the movies, and had a lot more going for it IMHO. The slightly more episodic storytelling gives a new life to it. (Plus everything was well-lit so you could actually see what was going on.)

What I'm trying to say is the story is only dead-ended if they try to stick with the movie setting. They could do something new with the characters without killing the whole thing.=Smidge=

They may not go after the anime audience, expecting them to watch weather or not it is good. If they do this right, many people will go see it. It has very deep and Matrix-like ideas (I believe Ghost came first). I am not a fan of anime, but I have seen the first Ghost In The Shell movie and enjoyed it. I watched it in a college film class on movie theater equipment. It all has to do with marketing it properly.

Just an FYI for future reference, the manga was released between 1989-1991, and the trade made it's appearence in English in 1995. The first movie (which covers a small part of the storyline in the Manga, and is VERY different in both tone and style) came out in 1995.

I think this is a fantastic idea that has tons of potential...so long as they stick to the animated movie.

Don't get me wrong, I prefer the tone and happenings and style of the Manga over the Movie, but I think the style and tone of the movie makes for a better movie.

Much of the humour and style in the original manga would be damn near impossible to duplicate on the screen. They could easily do things super-serious and philisophical, which is the way I hope they end up going.

So, let's see: Tom Cruise can play Batou. I know Batou is suppoed to be a big dude, and Tom Cruise is 4' 10", but I'm sure Cruise's face can easily be CGI'd onto a big, special effects body. Maybe they can also CGI in some acting ability. Jessica Simpson can play the Major. I know she's not Japanese--hell, she's a blonde--but what does that matter? We can wrap her in some tight, revealing costumes and no one will notice her from the neck up! She's made for the part! And instead of Japan, it can take place in L.A. And instead of hunting criminal, they'll hunt terrorists. Or maybe people who are mean to puppies. Or they guy who yesterday put whole milk instead of skim into Spielberg's latte.

Slightly O/T, but this brings up an interesting question: can't anybody in the world use Jar-Jar Binks without legally infringing on Lucas' copyright, since Binks is a pre-packaged parody of himself? (The same would apply to the donkey in Shrek, though perhaps more so since he's just Eddie Murphy and is the same character in so many things it would be hard to argue a new copyright existed just because he was a talking ass.)

--IANAL. This post is a joke. If you use it as legal advice, you probably deserve to get sued.

I watched GiTS in the original Japanese, then I started to watch an episode overdubbed in English. Man the voices sucked. For me GiTS is nothing without Atsuko Tanaka's rendering of the Major. If they switch to English they've gone and lost at least one customer.

As a GitS fan, I am exciting but at the same time worried about what 'Western' adaption of GitS would look like. Also although the original GitS movie was good, the SAC season I and II series are superior in the sense that fully a full 26 episode season really allowed the story and its universe to be examined in detail, something that a movie can never truly do.

With that said, I'd still be eager to see Hollywood version of GitS, even if I may very well end up hating it.

The idea shortage in Hollywood continues. As Harper's pointed out, more than half of the top-grossing movies of 2007 were sequels where N > 2.

Cartoon (not comic) to live action translation hasn't been that great. "Boris and Natasha: The Movie" (1992) was something of a flop, as was "Dudly Do-Right" (1999). A third try, "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle" (2000) was a dud, too, although it was at least funny. "Underdog" (2007) is the most recent dud.

"The Flintstones" (1994) was one of the few successes. "Casper" (1995) was a success, mainly because CG animation had become good enough to be used convincingly with live actors. Those had the novelty of a cartoon as live action. But that's been done now, and the novelty has worn off.

Comic books have been a more fruitful source of material, enough so that Marvel now has its own movie studio.

We've talked with the people at Dreamworks, and here's a quick list of the improvements that they hope to bring to the latest installation in the Ghost in the Shell franchise:

10. Cute kid to follow everyone around and ask a lot of questions9. Helpless female with nasal voice that screams a lot and has to be rescued over and over8. Less edgy animation so that American audience doesn't find it quite so jarring7. Speaking of jarring, do you think we could borrow Jar-jar from Lucas?6. Deep philosophical conundrums replaced with pop psychology and Jedi aphorisms.5. More clothing to avoid the R rating4. More senseless violence to fill in the parts we had to take out.3. A properly evil villain so people know who to hate.2. Good old-fashioned technobabble.1. A talking Donkey (Nice call, Rob!)

You might think it odd that he would have his own non-union counterpart working at his company Dreamworks, but actually that's a typo in the summary. The actual company that bought the rights is Dreamworks' non-union equivalent, Dreemwerx.

Anime is nothing more than a legal outlet for the pent up frustrations of pedophiles.

Which is not to say that there isn't good anime out there.

Make up your mind: it's either good, bad or just another medium out there, no more prone (nor less) to being misused than any other comic (or any kind of art, actually). For some definition of misused, that is.

Why, do you say good anime can't be simultaneously an outlet for pent up frustrations of pedophiles?

No, but I doubt someone who starts asserting that anime is "nothing more" than a legal outlet for paedophiles (as in anime being some kind of low level trash comic) will consider any anime good: painting anime in such broad brush strikes doesn't leave much place for consdering qualities. As such, his saying there is good anime looks too much like a troll (and it probably is).

Anime.. a genre?
What are you talking about? Anime is a medium like live action and cg. The genre Spielberg is talking about would be cyberpunk.
All your bizarre opinions about the medium aside, your post is based on a flawed premise. Ghost in the Shell is closer to Blade Runner than it is to Sailor Moon.

the medium is CG or cel animation. anime is the genre of japanese animation.

There is no genre called "japanese animation", anymore than there is a genre called "Hollywood movies" or "silent films". These are not genres.

A genre describes a work's "aboutness". It's a broad category that describes a set of themes. "Japanese animation" does not do that, and hence it is not a genre. All you know if somebody tells you a work is Japanese animation is that it was produced in Japan and if there is spoken dialogue, it's probably in Japanese. You know nothing of what the themes or aesthetics might be.

The Simpsons is animated in Korea. Does that makes the series' genre "Korean Animation"?

This is film theory 101. (Literally. That's the class I learned it in, 15 years ago.)

The cutesy art is designed to make the women characters seem more childlike and yet is unabashedly sexualizing and fetishizing the pre-pubescent female form.

And I suppose making the guys "cutesy" serves the same purpose? Or, for that matter, the cute children? It's made pretty clear who is what in anime.

Not that this really deserves a response. To even suggest such a thing is some combination paranoia, trolling, and a revelation -- what kind of a sick mind looks at Ghost in the Shell and calls it pedophil

How can you call the first Matrix film "Unique", when one of the many sources it stole so liberally from was indeed the GitS movie?

Obviously it added its own elements to the blend, but somewhat like that terrible Judge Dredd movie suffered due to Robocop, I can't see a way to remake Ghost In The Shell without being accused of ripping off The Matrix by people who don't know any better.

I can see Appleseed being the forefather of the next generation of anime. The 3D work in Appleseed was handled brilliantly.

Anime is stylized cartoons. 2D.

And yeah, we are certainly going to have a form of stylized 3D. The scifi-subset of anime sounds like a very obvious candidate for pioneering work in the field.

Hand-drawing every single frame of a movie just doesn't make sense these days. Computers can draw much better for the same price, and a director can do things like change his mind about a scene and redraw it. Humans are slightly less happy to see their hard labor being scrapped. And the particle effects and physics are plain evil difficult to draw. That's a bunch of reasons off the top of my head.

Yes, I know there is a lot more to anime than "stylized 2D". But with computers doing the 3D drudge work the designers can focus on getting all the storyline, atmosphere and artistic details just right.

Actualy, it's been a long time since anime was hand drawn and painted. Most shows nowadays are digitally painted, which helps keep colors vibrant and consistant. Even some of the later hand painted ones made use of CG in places. Ghost in the shell, for example, used CG heavily to do effects work.

I can't say that I'm entirely sad that Michael Bay isn't creating an Alita movie. Sure he may be preventing other people from working on it, but at least we won't have to sit through a summer blockbuster where she hacks Tiphares with a mac and everything explodes constantly.

Spielberg did a passable to good job through most of "AI", up to the moment where the little robot gave up and dropped into the sea. The completely tacky resurrection by aliens, however, ruined the film for me.So I'm a bit skeptical about him making GITS. Riddley Scott (Blade Runner) would be perfect.